Starr Light

As I have written elsewhere, I have two sons. In order to distinguish them, I will call them “Seven” and “Five.” Today Seven, apparently needing some personal space, announced to Five, “Get in the toybox.  I’ll sit on top.  Let’s see how long you can stay in there without complaining.” To be fair, they took turns being inside the box - which has ample holes for fresh air.   The record, so far, is one whole minute, but the entire game lasted for about 20 minutes. And, we all enjoyed some personal space. I give them a lot of credit for coming up with a creative way to get what they needed.

Passover, the eight-day fe stival celebrating the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery, ended tonight. For me, this year’s celebration was inspiring. The Seder, the traditional and ordered meal held the first two nights of Passover, is held in our homes.   Most years, only the host of a Seder has to accumulate the myriad symbolic elements. This year, as portrayed effectively on Saturday Night Seder, everyone was our own host and we all did our best, improvising as needed. In the lead up to the holiday, my younger son’s preschool class hosted its own Seder via Zoom.   His teacher urged students to use a lemon for the maror , or bitter herbs, which symbolize the bitter taste of being enslaved.   My son, without skipping a beat, declared that lemons are sour, not bitter, and that he would use a grapefruit instead.   Why not? It was uplifting to see so many people working hard to perpetuate our traditions.   There has been so much talk and hand...

I am a survivor of a traumatic accident. In 2006, while surfing on the West coast of Puerto Rico, I was hit in the head by another surfer.  I was in the water treading on a reef break, having just caught what – as a relatively new surfer – was a gnarly wave. She was mid-ride, and likely didn’t see me. She hit me square in the forehead with her board. Newton's second law of motion is often stated as F=ma.  In this case, consider the mass of a long board with adult rider; and the acceleration of a wave propelling the board.  Only then can you can gather the nature of the force with which I was hit. What followed in the short-term was an airlift from the West coast to the island’s only trauma unit in San Juan where I underwent emergency surgery to repair a massive dura tear and to patch what would later be diagnosed as a complete blow-out fracture of my left eye orbit.  What followed in the medium-term was three years of emergency hospitalizations, diagnoses, maj...